"Portrait painters now depend for their effect on the mere accidents of the entourage; on dress, on landscape, even on broad hints of a man's occupation, putting a plan on the engineer's table, and a roll in the statesman's hands, like the old Greek who wrote 'this is an ox' under his picture. If they wish to give the face expression, though they seldom aim so high, all they can compass is a passing emotion; and one sitter goes down to posterity with an eternal frown, another with an eternal smile."
"Or, if he be a poet," said Sabina, "rolls his eye for ever in a fine frenzy."
"But would you forbid them to paint passion?"
"Not in its place; when the picture gives the causes of the passion, and the scene tells its own story. But then let us not have merely Kean as Hamlet, but Hamlet's self; let the painter sit down and conceive for himself a Hamlet, such as Shakspeare conceived; not merely give us as much of him as could be pressed at a given moment into the face of Mr. Kean. He will be only unjust to both actor and character. If Flake paints Marie as Lady Macbeth, he will give us neither her nor Lady Macbeth; but only the single point at which their two characters can coincide."
"How rude!" said Sabina, laughing; "what is he doing but hinting that La Signora's conception of Lady Macbeth is a very partial and imperfect one?"
"And why should it not be?" asked the actress, humbly enough.
"I meant," he answered warmly, "that there was more, far more in her than in any character which she assumes; and I do not want a painter to copy only one aspect, and let a part go down to posterity as a representation of the whole."
"If you mean that, you shall be forgiven. No; when she is painted, she shall be painted as herself, as she is now. Claude shall paint her."
"I have not known La Signora long enough," said Claude, "to aspire to such an honour. I paint no face which I have not studied for a year."
"Faith!" said Scoutbush, "you would find no more in most faces at the year's end, than you did the first day."